A quick trip to Delft

Yesterday Val had to go to a course at Uni Delft. Due to her tendency to get lost I figured I had better make sure she got there ok. Because, as everyone knows, Kim always gets to her destination, on time, without even thinking about getting lost!
Unfortunately this not quite so impeccable record was revisited again yesterday. We began well, passing through a beautiful nature area.

 We saw this creature, and managed to get quite close. It was not fenced in, so I guess it must have been quite tame, although we have no idea what it is. Perhaps some kind of buffalo...

We could only applaud our good sense of direction for so long, before this happened. I was telling Val a pretty exciting story, and I was waving my arms a bit or something... anyway, we crashed into eachother and both landed pretty hard along with my poor bike. The front fender was bent pretty bad, but 15 minutes later we were back on track.

We arrived at the university, so that was our objective accomplished for the day! The only down side was that we arrived 15 minutes before the end of class... So we decided to visit some museums that we had free entrance to with our Roterdam pas. The picture below is from the Royal Delft museum. This picture illustrates the making of the pottery, after which a charcoal sheet is placed on top and stencils drawn, and finally the black paint is baked in the oven after which it turns this world-famous blue! It is quite neat how a fairly simple craft can become so famous!

 

Mmm, McCroquette burgers. How is this not a thing in Canada!?

 

On the way home we lost our way pretty badly. A construction zone blocked off the path we should have taken, which was pretty unfortunate. We ended up walking through mud in a construction zone with high heels, and even the locals didn't know exactly where we should go. So yeah, it was a bit long. We finally found a sign that said 'Rotterdam' and had an arrow pointing in the general direction. Which was quite nice, except that about five minutes later my bike tire gave a shivering hiss and within two seconds was completely flat. Which began a very long walk, carrying my bike. After walking about 20 minutes, the most kind gentleman finally took notice of these two damsels, and offered to drive me to a nearby bicycle shop. He also happened to be Canadian, of all things! It was only a valve that needed to be replaced, and the tire pumped up. 1.5 Euros later, we asked an old woman for directions. She had a hard time deciding on telling us where to go, and finally decided on the 'scenic route' which was quite out of our way, but apparently was more beautiful and would take us past her father's home. Anyway, we tried to follow her directions but pretty soon gave up. But things grew more and more familiar, and we ended up finding our own way home along the river, which is one of the most scenic routes I've biked on and is also shorter :) Thanks anyway old lady!

Nine hours of biking later, we finally arrived home. And drank tea. Really, I may not follow old lady's directions but when it comes to their tradition of drinking tea I am an old lady's biggest fan!

I hope your week is going well also! 

Blessings,

Kim